


this moment has waited it's whole life for you

by ShyAudacity



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Asexual Jughead Jones, F/F, Fluff, Fred Andrews is the best parent, Friends to Lovers, Gunshot Wounds, Homophobic Language, Hurt Archie, Hurt Jughead, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Jughead-centric, M/M, Panic Attacks, Pining, Soulmates, Whump, its not mentioned but
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-17 17:24:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10598667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShyAudacity/pseuds/ShyAudacity
Summary: He loses Archie that summer over some girl, he doesn’t directly say that it’s a girl, but Jughead has a hunch. His ability to see color never fades, which confuses him for only a minute before he decides that he doesn’t care about it.Then, one night shortly after sophomore year has started, Jughead’s father comes home drunk for the third time that week. It turns into a screaming match, it’s a miracle that they don’t wake up half the trailer park with how loud they’re yelling. At some point, the older man shoves at his son harder than he meant to; Jughead trips over a rug, then his own feet, and he brains himself on the kitchen counter.ORYou can only see in color after you’ve met your soulmate, but if they die then the color goes away. If they’re unconscious or almost dead, you can only see their favorite color.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [inkpot blot](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10576431) by [gayforroxane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayforroxane/pseuds/gayforroxane). 



> I've been at a lack of inspiration lately so shout-out to oopsiwroteathing for writing that inspired me to write this fic! Title is taken from Sierra Demulder's "Today Means Amen"
> 
> I do not give my permission to have this fic or any of my other works to be posted elsewhere on wattpad, fanfiction.net, etc.

Jughead doesn’t remember the exact day that he began to see in color, all he knows is that it happened around the time he started preschool. He told his mother when she picked him up from school that day and she hugged him tight.

That night, he told his father as soon as he’d come home from work. The older man had grumbled at his son, smacking him over the back of his head.

“You better not grow up to be some faggot, or so help me god.” FP had muttered to himself.

Jughead considered asking what meant, but decided against it, not wanting to get hit again.

Growing up in Riverdale was hard for Jughead, he had a first name that no one his age knew how to pronounce and a nickname that wasn’t doing him any favors. He stood out among his classmates; his family was poor growing up, that made him an easy target and the butt of nearly every joke. Jughead only had two friends, Archie and Betty, maybe three if you count Kevin.

Jughead didn’t mind much that his classmates liked to berate him. He had Archie and his colored eyesight, for a while, that’s all he thought he needed. He grew up learning to tune out the taunts that followed him down the school hallway. They got worse over the years, especially once they got to high school, but he didn’t let it bother him.

Then one day, two weeks before the end of his freshman year, his mother announced that she was taking Jellybean and going off to live to with his grandparents out in Boston. He wanted to ask her to take him with her, wanted to beg her not to leave him alone with his dad in Riverdale. But Jughead never asked, not wanting to hear her say no.

The two girls leave early the next morning, and Jughead stays in bed as he hears the car drive away from the trailer park. He doesn’t return to school until the last day, only because Archie insisted that he should take at least one of his finals. They run into Betty on the walk to school, she hugs him tight and asks where he’s been.   

Jughead lies through his teeth, he tells her that he caught a nasty stomach bug. Archie looks at him funny afterward, but does not ask why he’d been gone from school in the first place. Jughead can’t bring himself to tell him either.

He loses Archie that summer over some girl, he doesn’t directly say that it’s a girl, but Jughead has a hunch. His ability to see color never fades, which confuses him for only a minute before he decides that he doesn’t care about it.

Then, one night shortly after sophomore year has started, Jughead’s father comes home drunk for the third time that week. It turns into a screaming match, it’s a miracle that they don’t wake up half the trailer park with how loud they’re yelling. At some point, the older man shoves at his son harder than he meant to; Jughead trips over a rug, then his own feet, and he brains himself on the kitchen counter.   

He wakes up later in the emergency room with the worst headache he’s ever had. Archie is sitting at the foot of his bed, looking at him with the most terrified expression he’s ever seen. He visibly relaxes when Jughead makes eye contact with him again.

“Where’s my dad?” He mutters, internally cursing himself afterward because it hurts his head.

“We don’t know, Jug. Nobody can find him.” Archie tells him in a quiet voice, squeezing his leg gently.

“Then why do you looked so freaked out?”

“It’s- It’s nothing, you just scared me, t-that’s all.”

He doesn’t remember any before his father shoved him, and frankly he doesn’t want to. Jughead goes home with the Andrews after that, his father having apparently dropped off the face of the earth. He stayed with Fred and Archie until the two of them finished high school. He’s lucky enough to get a full-ride scholarship to a school two hours away from Riverdale, Betty and Archie get into the school as well. The three of them can’t leave town fast enough.

Archie and Jughead don’t even question living together in the dorms, they’ve done it for two years and don’t plan to stop any time soon. They’re both there when Betty meets her roommate, Veronica. The boys watched as the confusion and then overwhelming joy came across both of their faces. It’s when Betty turns to them with a tearful grin that Jughead understood what had happened.

“It’s amazing Juggie,” She tells him later that night. “I’ve been dreaming about this day for years. I didn’t think that I’d ever get to see in color.”

He congratulates her again and wishes that he could remember his own experience. He doesn’t spend much more time thinking about it all because Archie is dragging him to the mess hall, saying that he’s hungry. His heart seems to beat a million times a minute when he looks down at where their hands are connected. 

Jughead doesn’t know when he came to terms with his feelings for Archie, it snuck up on him his junior year and he made it a point not to tell anybody. He knows it was around the same time that he realized he’d likely never know who his soulmate is. All he knew about them is that they’re from Riverdale, and he has no plans to return to that god forsaken town.

When they finish college, Archie and Jughead get an apartment on the edge of the city. It’s ten minutes from the upstairs apartment that Betty and Veronica have been renting out since their junior year. Betty and Jughead are having lunch one day a few weeks after they’ve moved in.

“How’s the new place?” Betty asks him.

“It’s nice, the only thing is that the-.”

He stops himself as his vision swims, the world around him flashing from black and white back to color every few seconds. Except the sky, and Betty’s eyes; her eyes stayed as bright and blue as ever. There’s a voice in the back of his head that’s telling him that he needs to go home, he needs to go home and check on Archie _right now_.

“Jughead? Jug, are you okay?” Betty asks.

“I have to go.” He tells her, getting up from the table and running out of the door.

He doesn’t stop running until he makes it back to the apartment, it takes him less than three minutes. When he arrives, the door looks like it’s been kicked in. Half of the furniture has been turned over, and the vase that Jughead’s mother had bought them is shattered on the floor. If at all possible, Jughead panicked even more.

“Archie?” he called. A groan comes from his bedroom.

The color in his vision is still playing tricks on him as he rushes into the bedroom. The first thing he sees is the navy blue of Archie’s sweatshirt. Archie is crumpled against the chest at the foot of his bed, one hand holding his ribcage the other pressed firmly against his left shoulder. His color comes back and Jughead realizes that Archie’s been shot, that he’s bleeding out on the floor of his bedroom.

“Juggie?” Archie asks, looking up at him blearily.

“Shit, Archie.” Jughead says, scrambling to the floor to help his friend. He gets an arm under Archie’s shoulders and props him up. Archie whines audibly at the movement. Jughead hears footsteps getting closer, stomping into the apartment. Betty comes into the room.

“Jughead what wa- oh my god.” She says, her voice breaking.

“Call an ambulance, tell them he’s been shot.” He tells her, trying to keep his cool.

She runs out of the room and Jughead looks back at Archie. His eyes stay closed longer each time that he closes them, the color in Jughead’s sight fading in and out each time.

“Hey, hey Arch look at me, you gotta stay awake, okay? You gotta wait until the paramedics get here. You can’t give up on me now, Andrews, alright? I won’t allow it.”

“It hurts, Jug.” He grunts.

“I know, I know it does but you gotta hold on for a just few minutes okay? You hear me… Archie?”

Jughead meets Archie eyes just as they roll back into his head, his body going limp as Jughead tries to support his weight. Everything except for Archie’s sweatshirt goes to gray a second later. A terrified sob rips itself out of Jughead’s throat, not knowing what else to do in a moment like this one.

Not even a second later, paramedics are bursting into the bedroom, pulling Archie out of his grip and onto a backboard. Jughead moves until his back is up against the wall, pulls his legs to his chest then hides his face in his knees. Instinctually, he knows that he’s having a panic attack, but it’s been so long since he’s had one that he forgets how to stop it. 

Betty appears next to him at some point, she speaks softly in his ear. She says that she called Fred and that he’s already on his way, but they have to go meet Archie at the hospital. He’s not totally sure how he gets from the bedroom to the car, but the next thing he knows they're pulling up to the hospital.

Time seems to move slower in the waiting room. Jughead puts his head in Betty’s lap, allowing her to put her finger through his hair. The only color he can see is blue, the rest of them haven’t come back since Archie passed out in his lap. It makes him think of something his mother said to him years ago.

 _“It’s a messy system sweetheart,”_ She had said to him. _“You can only see in color after you’ve met your soulmate, but if they die then the color goes away. If they’re unconscious or almost dead, you can only see their favorite color. It’s how you know that something is wrong.”_

The little voice in his head supplies the fact that Archie’s favorite color has always been blue. The realization hits him like a ton of bricks and for a moment Jughead thinks he’s going to be sick. Archie has been his soulmate for all these years and he’s never figured it out; the thought makes him panic all over again.

After about an hour and a half, a pale in the face Fred Andrews bursts into the waiting room, and Jughead runs right to him, clinging to him and crying into his shoulder. Fred asks what happens as he cradles his beanie covered head, Jughead tells him what he knows. Tells him that someone tried to break in while Archie was there and it ended badly.

A doctor comes out a few minutes later, tells the three of them that Archie is out of surgery and that he should be fine. Says that they can go in and see him, but he won’t be awake for some time because of the anesthesia and his body needs it rests after the events of the day.

Jughead goes in by himself, Betty having gone home and Fred talking with the doctors and calling his ex-wife to inform her of the details. He sits at Archie’s bedside, holding his hand as his friend floats in and out of consciousness, each time more confused than the last.

At some point around the six-hour mark, after Fred has checked into the hotel down the street for the night, Archie comes to again. Jughead watches the color stream into his vision, gripping Archie’s hand.

His eyes dart around the room. “Juggie?”

“Hey, hey man I’m right here. You’re at the hospital, remember? There was an accident, can you tell me what happened?”

“S-somebody tried breakin’ in. Where’s my dad?”

“He had to go, but he’ll be back first thing tomorrow, okay?”

Archie nods, falling asleep again. Jughead sighs deeply, wishing to himself that this day had never happened in the first place.

It’s another day or so before Archie stays awake for more than a few minutes at a time, and even then, he gets tired easily and takes a lot of naps. A few days later, the day before Archie is supposed to get discharged before going to the rehab facility, the two of them are pretending to pay attention to a baseball game on TV when Archie speaks up.    

“You know that I can see in color, right Jug?”

The question catches him off guard, and for a moment he struggles to find the right words. “I-I had a hunch that you did.”

Archie nods, then continues to speak. “I thought I was losing my color once, when I was fifteen. I was watching a movie with my dad when I realized that I could only see the color red.”

Jughead gapes at him, but he keeps going.

“I started freaking out, you know? I didn’t know what was happening and I couldn’t remember when I’d met my soul mate, so I thought I was doomed. You should’ve seen me, I made my dad drive all over town trying to find whoever it was. Finally, when we pulled up to your house, I ran inside and found you lying on the floor.”

“For a second I thought you were dead, I mean you weren’t answering me or opening your eyes. Then I realized that I could see the blood from where you’d hit your head, and it dawned on me: wait, I see can this. So, dad and I take you to the hospital, and I sit there, just waiting for you to wake up. Then you did, and all at once my color came back to me.”

“Archie-.” Jughead tries.

“I was mortified to tell you, you had just moved in and I didn’t want to jeopardize our friendship by telling you something so big. There were so many times when I thought about telling you, god I thought I might burst if I didn’t say how I felt about you. I wasn’t ready to lose you, Juggie, I’m still not.”

Jughead doesn’t know what to say, screaming at himself on the inside to say something to his bes- to his _soulmate_.   

“Please say something so I know that I didn’t read into this situation wrong.” Archie says, his voice small.

“No, you- you’re um…” Jughead scrambles. “You’re right. I-I just figured it out a few days ago, but I didn’t say anything cause I didn’t want to scare you off if I was wrong.”

Archie grins at him, “You could never scare me off Jug.” He links their fingers together, tugging him closer until their foreheads are touching. They kiss for only a moment before pulling away, Jughead hides his face in Archie’s good shoulder.

“I’ve wanted to do that for years.” he whispers.

Archie beams widely at him, then kisses him again like he’ll never get another chance to do so. When the two of them finally pull away, Jughead feels like he’s seeing in color for the first time all over again. He swears to himself that he’ll never forget this moment for as long as he lives.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading this! I really hope that you liked it, please do let me know what you thought about it! You can find me on tumblr as paranoidbean or at my riverdale blog thejugheadchronicles. If have a prompt/something that you wanna have written, hit me up and I'll see what I can do! Thanks again for reading, have a great day!


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